


It's only a wank after all

by Anonymous



Category: History Boys (2006), History Boys - All Media Types, History Boys - Bennett
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Brief Oxford details, Dakin is a mess but mainly he's a prick, Dubious Consent, M/M, Non-Explicit, Northern slang, Scripps is very repressed, vague in fact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-18 04:01:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11283351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A sense of falling, like an arrow-showerSent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.





	It's only a wank after all

**Author's Note:**

> Two consecutive scenes.

“Scripps!”

  
A double knock, a sloppy crotchet-quaver combination.

  
“Donald  _ Scripps _ ,” the same voice, emphasis not shifting from the surname, “Come on, you pious sod, open the fucking door.”

  
The said Scripps had, up until this moment, been content in bed, asleep  _ sans _ looming hangover thanks to careful moderation in the pub last night. It was now impossible to remain so, with the human equivalent of a hangover looming outside his room.

  
A regretful grumble, and he rolled haphazardly out bed. A deep sigh, and he leaned against the doorframe. Opened it a dubious six inches.

  
“Bit early for you isn’t it,” he yawned, added without malice, “you great gobby twonk.”

  
Dakin shouldered past him into the room. Scripps managed to open his eyes, and was faced with the challenge of focusing on an agitated, pacing Dakin.

  
“You look crapper than usual,” Scripps proffered by way of small talk

  
“I need you to check on Posner,” Dakin said, at exactly the same moment.

  
Scripps blinked. “Eh?”

  
“Yeah, and I do feel  _ right _ shit.”

  
“Not your usual area of concern, Stu.”

  
“You’d be concerned if you felt this ‘angin.”

  
“I meant,” Scripps folded his arms, “Posner’s wellbeing is rarely your top priority.”

  
To Scripps’ mild surprise, Dakin flinched at that and abruptly broke off his pacing in favour of leaning on the windowsill and staring out at the quad below.

  
“I got absolutely rat arsed last night,” came a comment addressed seemingly to the diamond panes.

  
For the revelation awaits an appointed time, recited Scripps internally. “You know, I think we’ve established th—”

  
“Me and Posner. We had sex.”

  
Ten seconds of disorientation. Five blinks. One aborted attempt at a response.

  
“You what?”

  
“It gets a bit patchy after a point. Don’t remember everything.”

  
“Would that be the point when Timms brought up a certain paraplegic history tutor and you proceeded to down pints like you’d just graduated two years early?”

  
No response, the lawn outside obviously endlessly fascinating. Scripps was at a complete loss.

  
“But,” he said as reasonably as he could, running his hands through his hair, “Pos is  _ well _ over you.” 

  
It made absolutely no sense. Dakin fidgeted. Went to speak. Didn’t.

  
“It makes absolutely no sense,” Scripps tried it out loud this time. “There’s been a bit of an increased genepool since Cutlers. Why on earth would he want to do it with his over-gelled, over-sexed, intoxicated ex-crush?”

  
He felt somewhat ill, and angry beyond the usual exasperation brought on by attempting to interact with Stuart Dakin before breakfast.

  
“Stuart, you’d better start telling me what’s going on right now. Why d’you need  _ me _ to check up on him when  _ you’re _ the fucker he’s apparently shagged?”

  
“We had sex,” Dakin restated hesitantly, “But I’m not entirely sure he wanted to.”

  
Scripps’ stomach was suddenly filled with lead.

  
“As I said, it’s — it’s patchy.” Dakin gave a very tense shrug. Drew in a breath. “I definitely remember him kissing me back at one point. But I don’t think he was that keen on me coming up to his room. I — I thought he didn’t want the porter to … anyway. When we … when I finished he didn’t move. I had to turn him over. His eyes were all,” he makes a vague hand gesture about his face, “glassy. It was weird. Scary, nearly.”

  
Dakin’s head lolled back against the glass, the heels of his hands pressing into his eyes. Scripps’ heartbeat had sped up, blood was roaring in his ears. He passed a had over his face. Let out a breath. And a laugh. Part of him was surprised at how cold it sounded.

  
“What you’ve come here to say … bloody hell,” he flung up his arms. Tried again, finding himself speaking rather quietly; coolly precise with reigned in anger. “You are, in fact, telling me, that last night, due to some imagined slight to your virility, you did, on your way back to college, decide to fuck my best friend without asking him his opinion on the matter?”

  
“Not just because of Irwin!"

  
"Bloody  _ hell _ , Dakin!"

  
"Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed the lad’s got to be a bit of a bobby _fucking_ dazzler lately—"

  
“What the _ fuck _ ?” He began pulling his jeans on. 

  
"Everyone knows that you—”

  
"Fuck  _ right  _ off." Grabbed his keys.

  
“I didn’t—”

  
“You utter cunt!” Dakin was shoved out of the door. Scripps strode off down the corridor.

  
“Scripps—”

  
“Fucking  _ hell _ !” This was shouted without a backwards glance as he made his way to Magdalene.

  
***

  
Scripps is oblivious to the porter’s disapproval as he jogs through the lodge, his mind a confused frenzy of worry. David’s being with them last night had been a rare feat of persuasion, he’d become almost reclusive of late out of a nasty combination of exam stress and another, more insidious lowness of spirits that even Don couldn’t seem to shift. For the night to have apparently ended like this … it’s too awful to think about. He only wishes that was an option.

  
Suddenly, he is confronted with David’s door. It takes him a few second to realise he’d passed through Magdalene’s famous gardens in all the glory of April without even registering the fact.

  
He knocks. How the fuck does one knock reassuringly?

  
“Pos?” Nothing. He waits a couple of minutes, breathing heavily. Another try. “David? It's me.”

  
Scripps strains to listen: hears a faint, careful stirring, then a tap runs. His forehead is pressed against the old wood of the door, he inhales the pleasant mustiness as he listens to another slight rustling; steps back slightly as he hears his friend’s light tread approach.

  
David opens his door, and it's painfully clear he's been crying. Blue eyes that are red rimmed sparkle a little too much in the morning sun he’s shading them against. Scripps feels a lump in his throat and a weight on his chest, and the joint urges to hold David firmly in his arms and to punch Dakin firmly in the jaw fight a short but agonising battle inside him. Neither win.

  
“Mind if I come in?”

  
“’Course not, Scrippsy,” David gives a tight, tired smile. He moves away from the door as Don enters, casts around on his desk for something or other. “You know, I haven't finished that reading on power abuses in Tudor courts yet,” he half-perches gingerly on the desk, glances out of the window. “I was going to get that done this morning. Thought we'd go over it this afternoon.”

  
Although the hand that he runs through the front of his hair visibly shakes, this is all said with great care in a soft, steady voice. David, Don notes, does most things with a good deal of care and delicacy. Which is why, he decides, the contrast between David’s fresh trousers and obviously-slept-in shirt sticks out like a horribly sore thumb. It's a pale blue polo shirt with white edging, and it's missing three buttons. Don feels sick again.

  
“I didn't come for that.”

  
“Oh?” He’s not denying anything, but his voice is flat, devoid of all expression.

  
“I …” Don reaches out to touch his arm, and is shaken when he gives an involuntary flinch. “I needed to see that … if ... whether you were alright.”

  
David retreats. Sits on the oddly sheetless bed with one knee drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around it too tightly. He takes in a shuddering breath. Squeezes his eyes closed. Affixes the same small, strained smile to his face and nods.

  
“Fine,” is clearly all he can get out.

  
Scripps really is floundering; casting about as if a solution will suddenly present itself. Rooms in this college, he notes, have plenty of shelf space, but the Victorian ceilings mean most of it goes to waste. Even he can only reach the second shelf; his small friend resorts to stacking books in neat, ever-accumulating piles. This morning, he sees several of those lying toppled. Fuck.

  
“You see, Dakin—” Don starts, but winces as David's breath catches sharply and he ducks his head behind his knee. 

  
It's making Scripps' chest ache and his head pound, seeing the fragile angles of his friend's limbs tremble as he tries so hard to regain his composure. He can hardly bear it, so he looks away. He's only met with another spike of nausea because he immediately spots the conspicuously absent bed linen balled up in a corner.

  
Scripps is sat at David's side in under two seconds, right hand pressed flat between his shoulder blades, because he can't not touch him, needs to reassure him, can't stop himself from touching him even if he doubts reassurance is the effect it'll have given the circumstances.

  
“He told me that the two of you,” Scripps swallows, he seriously can’t do this, “kissed. Last night.”

  
David, seeming to relax minutely, rests his head against Scripps' shoulder and peers vaguely at the ceiling. He pulls a face. Sniffs. Whispers, “Yeah.”

  
“Seems sort of off,” a prompt.

  
“It was a bit weird. You know he never fancied me, but last night he followed me up here. Couldn't ... he wouldn't be put off,” the tension in his body is back now, he pulls both legs up to his chest and bites his lip. Scripps gazes at that for a few seconds.

  
“What happened?”

 

David just shakes his head. Scripps feels him shrug. He shifts his arm so it’s wrapped around him: he holds him and waits.

 

“Dakin was fully pissed, wasn’t he,” It’s not a question.

 

“Yeah,” Scripps answers anyway, voice low.

 

“I was a bit better, but not much. I had hardly any but I hadn’t really eaten anything, plus I’m a bit … out of the habit.”

 

Scripps goes for a nod. It would be wonderfully peaceful, holding David like this with the Spring sunshine turning his hair into a golden halo, were it not for the worrying rapidity of his friends heartbeat and the fact that he was still trembling.

 

“What I’m getting at,” David breathes in and out carefully, “is that it was a bad combination, because he wouldn’t listen to me and I couldn’t get him to stop.” His voice had wobbled on  _ listen _ and broken on  _ stop _ , and now he seems to have lost control of his breathing. Don has no idea what to do, just holds him tighter without realising he’s doing so.

 

“What? What wouldn’t he stop?” Don doesn’t know why he asks that, because it’s bloody obvious really. This close he can see that the blotchy redness of David’s face and neck is only half due to tiredness and tears.

 

“I tried,” David gasps, “I  _ tried _ to make him understand that we shouldn’t — that I didn’t want — but — but in the end I just froze up and I couldn’t move and it was like I was watching it all from far away and—”

 

“God, Pos, what did he  _ do _ to you?” A stupid thing to say, because he knows, knows from the way David’s gasping out more sobs than breaths onto his shoulder.

 

“He — he ripped my top and he …” David pushes at the collar of his poloshirt in a distraught gesture that exposes a painful-looking red mark on his narrow shoulder. It’s clearly a bite, and Don feels genuinely ill.

 

David’s sobs are reaching terminal velocity, and he’s sure this counts as hyperventilation but he’s terribly lost; just folds both his arms around his friend, rubs his back and does his best to make comforting noises. He buries his nose in David’s hair, vaguely hoping that the comfort accompanying this smell of warmth and shampoo has a Scrippsian counterpart.

 

After about a minute of this improvisation, the desperate gasping subsides and is gradually replaced with gentler weeping. It’s no easier for Don to listen to. They don’t stop clinging to one another.


End file.
